Color lithograph, 1894. 1200x845 mm; 47 1/8x33 1/8 inches (sheet), full margins. Second state (of 2), with letters. Printed by Chaix, Paris.
The design and printing of the poster for Babylone d'Allemagne had a scandalous background. The poster advertises a book written by Lautrec's (1864-1901) friend Victor Joze (1861-1933). The two had collaborated before, in 1892, when Lautrec designed a poster for La Reine de Joie, to advertise another book by Joze. Two years later, Joze again approached Lautrec to help promote his latest work, Babylone d'Allemagne (or The German Babylon), exposing the decadence of the Berlin aristocracy.
The poster, one of Lautrec's most elaborate designs, is composed of two opposing diagonals. The first is the line formed by the ascending cavalry parade, with a handsome young German officer astride his mount. The second diagonal is formed between the hirsute sentinel lower left and a passing bourgeois couple upper right, the woman casting her glance at the blond rider. The white haunches of the horse (the uninked paper itself) are outlined in Lautrec's favored olive green, and the blank space attracts the viewer's eye.
When Joze saw the finished poster, with the prominently displayed horse's rump and the unattractive German guard (allegedly a caricature of the Kaiser), he felt that it was too dangerous to post all over Paris, and that it might result in a political backlash. Lautrec anticipated Joze's concern, and to thwart any plans to squelch the image, had paid for the printing and distribution of the poster himself, and there was nothing to prevent the artist from displaying it. Adriani 58; Delteil 351.
